Career crook Matthew Traynor – who claimed at John Gotti’s 1987 trial that prosecutors gave him pizza, beer and drugs to get him to testify against the Dapper Don – was arrested yesterday after trying to rob a Queens bank with a dud grenade, police said.
Traynor walked into a Greenpoint Savings branch on Broadway in Astoria around 3 p.m. and, grenade in hand, demanded money at a teller’s window, cops said.
But the teller got fidgety, and Traynor, 58, fled, leaving the grenade behind.
A woman called 911, and the bank manager ran outside after the suspect as police rushed to the scene. Traynor was quickly arrested around three blocks away, said cops.
Later, the police bomb squad determined that the grenade was inert. But subway service at the Broadway station of the nearby N and R lines was stopped as a precaution, said police.
Traynor was released last October from the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility on Staten Island, where he was serving time for robbery and assault stemming from a bank robbery in Nassau County, state records show.
He was most notorious for his testimony at John Gotti’s 1987 racketeering trial.
Traynor was supposed to testify for the prosecution about how he’d known Gotti since they were children, and had been involved in crimes with Gotti’s mob family.
But instead, he turned the tables on the government, claiming as a defense witness that prosecutors plied him with beer, pizza, Valium, and other favors to induce him to lie on the witness stand about Gotti and other defendants.
He even claimed that the lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane Giacalone, had given him a pair of her underpants.
Observers thought at the time that Traynor’s inflammatory testimony led the jury to acquit Gotti and the other defendants. The case led Gotti to become known as the “Teflon Don.”
But it turned out that Gotti henchman Sammy “Bull” Gravano had bribed a juror $60,000 to ensure Gotti’s acquittal. Both Gotti and the juror were later convicted of bribery.
Then, Traynor conceded he lied on the witness stand – alleging he was put up to it by Gotti lawyer Bruce Cutler, a charge Cutler hotly denied.
Traynor pleaded guilty in 1989 to a federal perjury charge.
Parole officials say that Traynor’s conviction in the Nassau bank robberies put him under parole supervision until February 2013 – meaning that if he’s convicted of any aspect of yesterday’s robbery, he’s headed back to prison.